Looking Forward Towards Christmas
Oct 26 (commentary)--While there's been a lot of moaning about price increases lately, here in the US it doesn't look like the Christmas buying season is going to be much different than last year: rebates, both longer term and rotating.
Nikon appears to be readying a program whereby pretty much everything has an instant rebate on it at some point between now and the end of the year (sometimes just for a week, and sometimes very modest in amount). As with last year, the Nikon coop ads change each week, promoting different products. If you remember what your local dealer was doing last year, this year should be pretty much deja vu.
Canon, too, seems to be moving the same direction, only slightly more chaotically. Dealers can tell me pretty much what Nikon's rollout of incentives is going to look like through the end of the year, but seem to have more trouble following what Canon is up to. As one dealer put it to me "Canon's advertising support usually shows up two to three days after the program begins." The 50D and Xsi prices have already been adjusted. Other models seem to be destined for reduction, as well.
Bottom line: if you're thinking about buying a new product between now and the end of the year, you might want to wait a bit and look closely at the local dealer coop ads that should start appearing any day now.
Still, a word of warning: the currency situation is still highly volatile, and no one knows how "hot" or "cool" the US economy is going to be this Christmas, so there's a good chance that whatever the camera companies already have planned, they may have to adjust those plans. A really hot selling season coupled with a drop in the dollar's value would tend to get instant rebates cancelled or lowered in value. A really cool selling season with a relatively stable currency exchange would tend to increase the size and frequency of rebates. Still, the planning required to get coop advertising into the field means that the basics of each company's strategy is mostly predetermined. For Nikon, that means a different set of products being promoted each week between now and the end of the year. The Black Friday promotions are probably already locked in stone.
